


First Sharpen Your Tools

by betweenthebliss



Category: Sense8 (TV)
Genre: Female Character of Color, Female Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-23
Updated: 2015-12-23
Packaged: 2018-05-08 17:17:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5506238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betweenthebliss/pseuds/betweenthebliss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Why wait? Why not go to them if you need them?</p>
<p>The thought might not be her own; she can't always tell for sure anymore. It's more comforting than any doubt ought to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	First Sharpen Your Tools

**Author's Note:**

  * For [eudaimon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/eudaimon/gifts).



In solitary, she can barely see six inches in front of her face. She drags the back of her hand across her cheek, erasing the tears, streaking blood in their place. Licking her lips, she tastes the coppery red of it.

Her knuckles are still raw; every time she comes close to calming, the fury starts to boil up again, and she takes it out on the wall. Helping Will, _being_ Will, was a relief, the guards a welcome target for the tempest inside her. But the reprieve was short-lived; now she is back here, in the claustrophobic dark, and she is so impotently angry she fears she will choke on it.

She waits for contact, for the demanding feeling that one of the others needs her. It's what brought her to Capheus in the warehouse, to Will in the hospital where they'd kept Riley prisoner. A tug like nausea behind her navel, a flare in her mind like hearing someone speak her name from across a room. She waits, but it doesn't come.

Frustration is thick in her throat. _Is this my reward for thinking them a hallucination?_ She slumps against the wall, sliding down to rest on her meager mattress. Her eyes slip shut; there's barely a difference between this and having them open. 

_Why wait? Why not go to them if you need them?_ The thought might not be her own; she can't always tell for sure anymore. It's more comforting than any doubt ought to be. 

She takes a breath, lets it out, and _reaches_.

And then she's warm all over, her vision red with light against her closed eyelids, and a cool hand gently wraps itself around hers.

"You've broken the skin, but not the bones," says Kala, running a light touch across the tops of Sun's fingers, above her swollen knuckles.

Sun turns her head toward the voice without opening her eyes. "I know." She's broken enough fingers and toes over the years to know a break from a bruise. She'll hurt like a bitch for a few days, but it's only pain-- pain she's chosen, courted. This, she was expecting. Joong-ki with his terrible lies and more terrible truth, was worse.

"I don't understand that," Kala says as if she'd said it aloud. "How is pain you're expecting better than pain that's a surprise?" Sun can picture her expression-- brows drawn, dark eyes curious. When she opens her eyes, the reality is just as she'd imagined, down to the tiny wrinkle on Kala's forehead, but it quickly melts into a smile as their eyes meet.

"I chose this," she says, flexing her sore fingers and hearing the tendons crack. "I have control over it." That logic had sent her to prison. She'd thought that by giving up her freedom, she was keeping her promise to protect her family. It had seemed simple, if not easy-- now, that simplicity has wavered, become as fluid as the divide between her mind and Kala's, or Capheus', or Will's.

For a disorienting moment she sees the scene through Kala's eyes: the patio where they sit, the sense of where it lies in the city in relation to her workplace, her home, and Sun's own face, pale and drained, hollows like bruises around her eyes.

"It's different here," she says. The colours, the smells-- the air has a richness she can taste, a lushness she rarely experienced even before she went behind bars. Seoul was beautiful, but it didn't feel alive like this. Maybe _she_ didn't feel alive like this, before a stranger's suicide woke her to this new existence.

"It seems different to me, too," says Kala. Sun looks at her with a question in her eyes she's not sure how to phrase, and she goes on, "I'm not who I thought I was. I've learned things about myself-- not just about how I've changed, but about who I was before we changed." Sun can feel her thoughts turning as she talks; she's thinking of Wolfgang, of her fiance, of her own capacity for enduring violence, for participating in it.

"We are each still who we were, before," Sun says. "Except now we are more." She's thinking of Will's determination, Lito's courage, Nomi's trust. _We are each learning how to be more than we ever could have been alone_. They had proved it once already, against Whispers; what else might they achieve together? She was sure, now, that in time they would be a force to be reckoned with, more than any human could hope to counter, even someone as powerful as Whispers.

Kala's frowning; Sun knows without looking. "I still feel human," she says, looking down at their joined hands. "Don't you?"

Sun feels an ache somewhere behind her ribs that has nothing to do with her bruises. "More than I did before you," she says softly. The words are a revelation even as they're leaving her mouth. "Taking the blame for my brother-- I thought I was fulfilling my duty to my family. But I didn't know what I was giving up."

"You haven't given up yet," says Kala. Her fingers squeeze Sun's tight. "And we won't let you. Even when you're alone, we are with you-- and we aren't going to let you go without a fight." 

Sun swallows and nods. Words fail her. Her eyes are damp, but she doesn't cry. She's used to expressing herself with her fists-- she is unprepared for this kindness. 

"You're learning too," Kala says, smiling, and the press of her cool lips to Sun's forehead feels like a promise.

**Author's Note:**

> To eudaimon: This was the second of your prompts that grabbed me. There are so many stories about Sense8 I could write, but Sun and Kala and their potential for helping each other grow is one that I'm really excited to explore. I hope you like my take on it.  
> Title is from Confucius: You who would master your craft, first sharpen your tools.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] First Sharpen Your Tools](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9852437) by [Shmaylor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shmaylor/pseuds/Shmaylor)




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